


only something in me understands

by folignos



Category: Hockey RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folignos/pseuds/folignos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'You look stressed,' Nealer says one day while they're in the kitchen, putting Paul's groceries away.</p>
<p>'I… okay?' Paul says, holding out a hand for the tomatoes.</p>
<p>'Maybe you should make brownies,' Nealer continues, handing them over and turning to put the boxes of pasta in the cupboard. 'That might help.'</p>
<p>[Five times Nealer bullies Paul into baking, and one time he does it unprompted]</p>
            </blockquote>





	only something in me understands

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this last week on tumblr, and then when i went to put it on ao3, i saw someone else had written a v similar fic (which you should all read, it's [GREAT](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1898154)) so i thought i'd hang fire for a week or so so as not to blind you all with the magic of baker paul martin
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](http://toewses.tumblr.com)!
> 
> title from ee cummings' 'somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond'; shut up forever.

1.

'You look stressed,' Nealer says one day while they're in the kitchen, putting Paul's groceries away.

'I… okay?' Paul says, holding out a hand for the tomatoes.

'Maybe you should make brownies,' Nealer continues, handing them over and turning to put the boxes of pasta in the cupboard. 'That might help.'

'I'm not stressed?' Paul says, poking his head around the fridge door to squint at Nealer.

'But you're all squinty and tired looking,' Nealer says. He waves a bar of dark chocolate at Paul. 'Brownies make everything better.'

'I'm squinty because you're being weird,' Paul says, speaking slowly and patiently. 'And I'm tired because your sister rang at seven am to speak to me about  _curtains_.’

Nealer pauses, looks like he’s thinking, which Paul knows from experience is never a good thing.

'But… brownies?' he says eventually, with a hangdog expression that Paul knows only too well. He sighs and gets the butter out of the fridge.

2.

'Paulieeeeee,' Nealer says from where he's sitting upside down on the couch. Paul sighs, and pauses his game.

'What?'

'I'm hungry,' Nealer says, twisting his neck so he can look up at Paul beseechingly. It's not cute _or_ endearing, except for the part where it's both, and Paul is so gone on this disaster of a human being. Sigh.

'There's food in the fridge, Nealer, I'm not your servant.'

Nealer pouts, and tilts his head even more.

'No,' Paul says, and unpauses his game. 'Also, if you keep sitting like that, all the blood will go to your head and your eyes will explode.'

Nealer scowls at him, but after a couple of minutes rolls off the sofa and climbs into Paul’s lap, forcing him to abandon the game.

'You're a dick,' Paul informs him, tossing the controller onto the coffee table.

'Now can we have food?' Nealer asks, unrepentant. He leans down to press a kiss high on Paul's cheekbone, against a fading bruise.

'Ugh,' Paul says, swatting at him. 'You're the worst boyfriend ever.'

Nealer grins, and kisses him properly. ‘You’re my favourite boyfriend,’ he says, smirking. Paul tips him onto the floor.

'I'm your only boyfriend, asshole,' Paul says, but gets up and heads for the kitchen anyway, leaving Nealer to pick himself up from the floor and follow.

3.

'You are not subtle,' Paul tells Nealer, standing in the kitchen door with his hands on his hips.

'I don't know what you mean,' Nealer says, and he's not even pretending not to smirk.

'Really.'

'Sellotaping a condom to a bag of flour and leaving them next to a post-it note with a winking face on it is not cute, and it's not funny, and it's not charming,' Paul says. 'You are a child.'

'But you love me anyway?' Nealer tries, getting up from where he was sprawled on the living room floor. He's wearing his glasses and an old Gophers t-shirt of Paul's.

Paul pulls a face. ‘God knows why.’

Nealer curls his fingers into Paul’s beltloops and reels him in for a quick kiss. ‘I’m really good in bed?’ he asks.

Paul makes a considering noise before kissing him back. ‘You’ll do, I suppose. Do you want pancakes?’

'I love you,' Nealer says, completely straight faced and sincere, before sneaking another kiss. 'How about after?'

'After what?' Paul asks, and Nealer answers him by sticking his hand down Paul's pants, and nipping at Paul's collarbone, where his shirt collar is stretched and faded.

4.

'…Did you clean the bathroom?' 

Nealer looks up from where he’s sprawled on Paul’s bed in basketball shorts and nothing else. ‘Maybe? Why, what’s wrong with it?’

'Nothing,' Paul says. 'That's the problem. I didn't know you even knew where the mop bucket was.'

'Hey!' Nealer says. 'I know how to clean!'

'That's what shocks me!' Paul says, and then pauses. 'Wait. What do you want? What did you  _do?_ ’

Nealer looks indignant. ‘What makes you think I want something? Can’t I do something out of the goodness of my heart? Do you have that low an opinion of me? I’m  _hurt_ , Paulie.  _Wounded.’_

Paul just looks at him. About four seconds later, Nealer snaps.

'Okay, fine. My mom and sister are coming down, I was hoping you'd make those strawberry lemonade cookies you made last time, mom’s been talking about them for  _months_. She told me I’m not allowed to break up with you until you give her the recipe.’

Paul looks at him.

'Is that all?'

'…Yes?'

Paul starts laughing. ‘Fuck, Jimmy, I thought you’d crashed my car or set fire to my kitchen again.’

'That was  _one time_ ,’ Nealer says, scowling. ‘And I apologised,  _and_  paid for the renovation.’

Paul pulls the recipe up on his phone. ‘Come on, brat. We need to go to the store.’

Nealer stays where he is, looking shifty. Paul narrows his eyes.

'I… might have already bought all the stuff you need,' he says, looking at the bedcovers.

'You're absurd,' Paul says, crossing to the bed and dropping down next to Nealer.

'But you love me, right?' Nealer says, tilting his head up for a kiss.

'Until something better comes along,' confirms Paul, and kisses him lazily until he feels Nealer smiling against his lips.

5.

It’s becoming an alarmingly frequent occurrence, Paul realises one day, to come home from a run and find his living full of uninvited hockey players.

'Hey, Geno,' he says on his way past the couch. Geno raises his hand in greeting.

'Babe!' Nealer says, sitting up from where he was sprawled in an armchair. Paul has tried to teach him how to sit like a human being, but if there's one thing he's learnt dating James Neal, it's that some things just can't be taught. 'Did you know Geno's never had real waffles?'

Geno nods balefully. ‘Is tragedy, Lazy say,’ he rumbles.

'Uh-huh,' Paul says, unconvinced. He suspects he knows where this conversation is going.

'It is a tragedy of  _epic proportions_ ,’ Nealer says, earnest. ‘Poor Geno’s lived a deprived, waffle free life. Don’t you think we should do something to alleviate his suffering?’

'I'm not making you waffles, James,' Paul says. Mostly he wants to shower for like a half hour and change into clothes that aren't spattered with mud.

'They're not  _for me_ , Paulie,’ Nealer says carefully, as if Paul is a small and particularly slow child. ‘They’re for  _Geno_ ,’

'Can't you take him to a diner or something, if you're so insistent that he needs to try them?'

Nealer grins. ‘Hey, I never thought of that. Diner waffles are great, Geno, probably better than Paulie’s.’

Paul knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s not stupid, he can resist this weird, semi-insulting brand of reverse psychology. He can.

…He can’t.

‘Fine,’ he says, and Nealer lights up. ‘I’m showering first,’ Paul warns him, and heads for the stairs. ‘Make yourself useful and go buy me coconut milk!’ Nealer salutes lazily, and heaves himself up out of the armchair

+1

Paul spends the entirety of their anniversary pretending he doesn’t know what day it is.

He sincerely hopes Nealer is doing the same, and that he hasn’t actually forgotten it’s their two-year anniversary.

They have a game, which they win—Paul assists on the game winner and Nealer gets a couple of points on the board. Paul makes them dinner when they get in, mild curry with coconut rice, and Nealer gets a couple of the good beers out of the fridge in Paul’s garage. He gets halfway though his before falling asleep with his feet in Paul’s lap.

Paul curls a hand around the jut of his ankle and finishes his own beer in silence, the TV on mute and playing the game highlights. He watches Nealer’s second goal, a beautiful pass from Tanger that just sails past Niemi and hits the back of the net, and by the time, Nealer’s snoring gently, curled away from the TV and pressing his cheek into the back of the couch.

Paul moves his feet carefully, leaves Nealer sleeping before he pads into the kitchen in bare feet, pulls his mixing bowl down from the top of the cupboard. He doesn’t need to find the recipes on his phone; he knows this one by heart.

Nealer shuffles in when the cake is in the oven, scrubbing at one eye with his fist like a little kid. Paul loves him so much it’s a little embarrassing. He collapses into one of the stools around Paul’s island silently, and watches Paul wash the dishes with half-open eyes.

He grins sleepily when the cake comes out the oven and they make out easily while it cools, Paul seated on the island with Nealer standing in the open vee of his legs, arms looped around his neck.

Paul ices the cake with Nealer’s chin hooked over his shoulder, hands on his hips, not saying anything, just pressing a kiss to his jaw, his cheek, his throat, every so often. It’s distracting in the best kind of way.

'Happy anniversary, babe,' Nealer says when the cake's done, sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. There's frosting on his lower lip from where he'd stolen a half dozen tastes of it. Paul twists in his grip and kisses it away, feeling Nealer grin underneath him.

'Love you,' Paul says softly.

Nealer wraps a hand around Paul’s wrist and tugs him out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

'What, you don't want any cake?' Paul asks, teasing. 'You're been bitching about me making something with peppermint in for at least a week and a half.'

'It'll keep,' Nealer says, a little breathy, and kisses Paul, tugging on his lower lip with his teeth. Paul can only agree, and settles his hands on Nealer's hips, tilting his chin up to give Nealer a better angle.

He still tastes like peppermint, just like he had the first time Paul had kissed him, the first time Paul had made this cake, two years ago today.

 


End file.
